This invention relates to rack supports. More particularly the invention involves the use of a triangular bracket to mount the round base of a towel rack onto a vertical support.
Wall racks are frequently chosen for their artistic design or their aesthetic quality. Thus it has been an objective for inventors to design ways of securely mounting racks on walls with a minimum of screws or bolts externally exposed. Though the racks are often decorative, they usually have a utilitarian function. Therefore the hidden mount must be capable of supporting substantial weight and resisting forces from any direction, which would otherwise be capable of dislodging the rack from the vertical support.
Prior inventions have commonly employed a bracket which, when mounted, is hidden from view by a base of the rack. The base is secured to the bracket by a single headless screw which penetrates a wall of the base to contact the bracket. The problem has been to make such a mount strong enough to withstand the forces which are likely to be exerted on it.
Wall fixtures such as towel racks are frequently located in small rooms where there is much activity, making it common for the rack to be inadvertently bumped from any or all directions. Prior inventors have focused their attention on designing rack mounting means which resist gravitational forces applied to the objects which are hung from or placed on the racks. Whereas the present invention addresses the additional need for the rack to be able to equally resist forces from any direction.
The strength of the support depends on the relationship between the bracket and the base. Therefore the geometry of the base, chosen for its aesthetic qualities, frequently dictates what bracket configuration will provide the strongest support.
Rack bases have been designed in various shapes. For example U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,566,662, 2,506,602 and 1,9I5,479 teach methods for mounting substantially rectangular bases onto vertical supports. The brackets for these mounting means are similarly rectangular and usually have two contacts to the base. One contact is made by a screw through a wall of the base, and the other contact is made between a bracket flange and an interior portion of the base. These rectangular brackets, however, are not appropriate for mounting circular bases. Therefore other mounting configurations have been designed.
A typical mounting means for a circular base is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 2,059,858. The bracket is circular having a rectangular projection which is beveled at one end and flat at the opposite end. The beveled end conforms to a cavity in the interior of the base. A screw penetrates a wall of the base contacting the flat end of the projection, urging the beveled end of the projection into the cavity of the base accomplishing the mount. This mounting design may be adequate for resisting forces which directly counter the beveled end of the projection. However, since there are only two contacts between the bracket and the base, the fixture is susceptible to being dislodged from the support by lateral forces.
Other examples of prior mounting means capable of being used with circular bases are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,970,473 and 1,940,888. These patents teach the use of a round bracket capable of being received in a round cavity in the base. The bracket is then forced to engage a wall of the cavity by screwing a screw through the wall of the base. When mounted, there are only two contacts between the bracket and the base. Therefore these circular mounting means suffer from the same problem as the others discussed above. The mounts fail to adequately resist lateral forces which are commonly caused by inadvertently bumping or pulling an object from the rack.
It is an object of this invention to provide a means for mounting the round base of a rack onto a vertical support, the mounting means being strong enough to reliably support items which may be placed onto or hung from the rack, and to withstand forces from any direction which would otherwise dislodge the rack from the vertical support.
Another object of the invention is to provide a means for mounting the round base of a rack onto a vertical support, the mounting means being substantially hidden from view so that the aesthetic quality of the rack is unaffected.